Wall Drawing 273, by Sol LeWitt (September 1975)

Technique: graphite and crayon on 7 walls (details)

03/05/18 - The fifth floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting the exhibition "Pop, Minimal and Figurative Art". The last room is entirely dedicated to "Wall Drawing 273" by Sol LeWitt (USA, 1928-2009), an artwork of lines drawn directly on the wall. The instructions were left by the artist so that his presence wouldn't be necessary to reproduce it. Once the exhibition is over, the walls will be painted again, but LeWitt's work will not disappear thanks to that set of instructions. In spite of the precision that guides the executors, there's always certain variations. Abtract art is free from the obligation of describing the real world, thus LeWitt's artwork can be modified according to the dimensions, light and surface of the room to paint. "Wall Drawing 273" (1975), and most of LeWitt's works for that matter, seems random, unorganized and un-systematic, what makes it contemporary. When he began this works, the art system was still injected with order. Maybe this is why it is neat, delicately exact and obsessively repetitive.

Wall Drawing 273, by Sol LeWitt (September 1975)

Wall Drawing 273, by Sol LeWitt (September 1975)

If we just had to describe what we see, we could say: clarity, beauty, play, simplicity, logic. There are no references and we should not look for meaning because that would be betraying the artwork. We are standing in front of the abyss of irrationality. The absence of narration in LeWitt's work is what renders Modern a piece from the mid-70s.